Boom in mining for renewable energy minerals threatens Africa’s great apes

Up to a third of Africa’s great apes are threatened by a boom in mining projects for minerals required for the renewable energy transition, new research shows.

Mining harms apes through habitat loss, pollution and disease. It can also make habitats more accessible to hunters and farmers, as roads are carved into forest. More than two-thirds of primate species are already threatened with extinction. Research and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg – used data on operational and pre-operational mining sites in 17 African countries and mapped areas where mining and high ape densities overlapped. It defined a buffer area of 10km around the mine as the area that would be directly affected and a 50km buffer for indirect impacts.

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